Toutes les langues

Europe

Walking a Tightrope: Women and Veiling in the United Kingdom by Ayesha Salma Kariapper examines the ways in which public debates over the headscarf and the full-face veil have shaped the strategies of women from Muslim communities, strategies developed to deal with the limitations imposed on them in the name of religion, culture, tradition and identity within the community, and with racism and exclusion from mainstream society. You can now download the book for free!

From 1991 through 2001, a series of conflicts, including the Bosnian War, were fought on the territory of the Former Yugoslavia. During that time, ethnic, sexual and economic violence against women was rampant and rape was used as a tool for “ethnic cleansing”. Neither international nor domestic trials adequately addressed these multiple forms of violence against women, and neither was focused on the interests of victims. It was evident that a court designed by and for women was needed in order to develop a feminist approach to justice in this context.

Huda Jawad is a WLUML networker based in London, United Kingdom. She recently spoke at the Inspiring Migrant Women Conference in London. Below is the text of her speech, which drew partly upon the reflections she wrote for our 16 Days of Activism in 2013. The text of the speech was originally published on Huda’s website www.hudajawad.org

I was born in Baghdad and left Iraq at the age of two. I grew up in the United Arab Emirates and Syria before coming to settle as a teenager in London in the late eighties. My parents were political activists during the time of Saddam Hussein and fled Iraq after the death sentence was imposed on them in absentia. We travelled throughout the Middle East and seemed that we were constantly on the move.

By Marieme Helie Lucas, Algerian sociologist, founder and former International Coordinator of Women Living Under Muslim Laws

Sarajevo, Bosnia – May 8, 2015 - Yesterday May 7, the Women’s Court on war crimes against women during the war in the 1990’s formally started in Sarajevo, Bosnia.

Women have come together from all the corners of the former-Yugoslavia to participate in the Women’s Court in Sarajevo, to demand justice for the crimes committed against them during the wars and the enduring inequalities and suffering that followed.

We are facing a political threat, a totalitarian Islamist threat that manifests in terrorism. Journalists are defending something which is elementary to our democracy: our freedom to breathe and to laugh.

The individuals and organizations undersigned note with concern the increasing violence against the women’s peace organisation Women in Black -Belgrade, and in particular against its founder, Stasa Zajovic, who has been targeted repeatedly in the past few months by extreme-right political groups and individuals, as well as harassed by the police and justice system in her country.